Social networking is associated with increased anxiety related to COVID-19 pandemic in anesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine teams: a web-based survey

BACKGROUND: Critical care teams are on the front line of coronavirus-disease 2019 (COVID-19) management, which is a stressful situation OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to assess whether the use of social networks (SN) was associated with increased anxiety related to COVID-19 pandemic in critical care teams METHODS: We sent an Internet survey to physicians, residents, registered and auxiliary nurses, and nurse anesthetists providing critical care (anesthesiology, intensive care, emergency medicine) in several French hospitals The survey evaluated their use of SN, their source of information on COVID-19 and their level of anxiety and information on COVID-19 evaluated on analog scales rated from 0 to 10 (data presented as median[interquartile-range]) RESULTS: 641 respondents were included in the final analysis;553 were SN users (86 3%) spending a median time of 60[30-90] minutes/day on them COVID-19 related anxiety was higher in SN users than in healthcare workers not using them (6[5-8] vs 5[3-7]) in univariate (P=0 02) and multivariate (P<0 001) analyses with an average anxiety increase of 10% in SN users Anxiety was higher among healthcare workers using SN to obtain information on COVID-19 than in those using other sources (6[5-8] vs 6[4-7];P=0 04) SN users considered they were less informed on COVID-19 than those not using SN (8[7-9] vs 7[6-8];P<0 01) CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that SNs contribute to increased anxiety in critical care teams In order to protect their mental, critical care professionals may want to limit their use of these networks during the coming months